Pickup usability dominates: a brief history of mobile text entry research and adoption

Text entry on mobile devices (e.g. phones and PDAs) has been a research challenge since devices shrank below laptop size: mobile devices are simply too small to have a traditional full-size keyboard. There has been a profusion of research into text entry techniques for smaller keyboards and touch screens: some of which have become mainstream, while others have not lived up to early expectations. As the mobile phone industry moves to mainstream touch screen interaction we will review the range of input techniques for mobiles, together with evaluations that have taken place to assess their validity: from theoretical modelling through to formal usability experiments. We also report initial results on iPhone text entry speed

The Development Of A Human Centered Methodology For The Identification Of Communication Needs And The Assessment Of Hand-held Communication Devices Used To Support Communication Flow In High Consequence Emergency Management

Communication has been identified as a critical component in the outcome of emergency response. Post-mortems of “what went wrong” in disaster responses often point toward breakdown in communication between first responders, those directing rescue efforts, and the general population as one of the primary impediments to rendering timely aid and communicating adequate safety and weather information. Due to the high resilience, relatively low costs, and advanced features of modern hand-held communication devices, these devices are in a position to drastically improve communication flow during emergency management situations. Due to the lack of official implementation of these devices and the lack of the establishment of standard guidelines for device selection, the use of hand-held communication devices in emergency management is yet to be optimized. Island nations such as the Bahamas, which face unique challenges in regard to emergency management due to geographical, infrastructural, political, and cultural hurdles which are found in the region, can especially benefit from the optimized implementation of hand-held communication devices in emergency management. This study examined current emergency response procedures in The Bahamas, created a baseline for the current use of hand-held communication devices by Bahamian emergency management officials and civilians, identified the communication needs of Bahamian emergency management officials and civilians, and proposed a model for the selection of handheld communication devices based upon human factors principals and focusing on user priorities. This study began with a focus group interview which included 14 Bahamian emergency management officials in order to gain an understanding of current Bahamian emergency response iv procedures and the communication challenges faced by emergency management officials during high consequence emergencies. A paper based survey was conducted, in which 31 Bahamian emergency management officials answered demographic, skill level, and functionality questions related to the use of hand-held communication devices to support emergency related activities including those directed toward preparation, mitigation, and response. These emergency management officials provided invaluable input based upon their practical experience in high consequence emergency situations. 155 Bahamian civilians participated in a similar survey which was a reduced version of the survey used for emergency management officials. Both surveys included questions in regard to the background information of the participants, previous handheld communication experience, device performance, and what other communication devices were being utilized. The surveys were analyzed using statistical methods of categorical data analysis and correlations were identified. Several communication needs which were categorized as infrastructure, organizational, and equipment needs as well as a hierarchy of device selection factors in regard to the use of hand-held communication devices during emergency management situations were identified. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used in order to determine the priorities of each of the identified device selection factors and a model for the selection of hand-held communication devices used to support communication flow in high consequence emergency management was proposed

Exploring the logic of mobile search

After more than a decade of development work and hopes, the usage of mobile Internet has finally taken off. Now, we are witnessing the first signs of evidence of what might become the explosion of mobile content and applications that will be shaping the (mobile) Internet of the future. Similar to the wired Internet, search will become very relevant for the usage of mobile Internet. Current research on mobile search has applied a limited set of methodologies and has also generated a narrow outcome of meaningful results. This article covers new ground, exploring the use and visions of mobile search with a users' interview-based qualitative study. Its main conclusion builds upon the hypothesis that mobile search is sensitive to a mobile logic different than today's one. First, (advanced) users ask for accessing with their mobile devices the entire Internet, rather than subsections of it. Second, success is based on new added-value applications that exploit unique mobile functionalities. The authors interpret that such mobile logic involves fundamentally the use of personalised and context-based services

Assessing Smartphone Ease of Use and Learning from the Perspective of Novice and Expert Users: Development and Illustration of Mobile Benchmark Tasks

Assessing usability of device types with novel function sets that are adopted by diverse user groups requires one to explore a variety of approaches. In this paper, we develop such an approach to assess usability of smartphone devices. Using a three-stage Delphi-method study, we identify sets of benchmark tasks that can be used to assess usability for various user types. These task sets enable one to evaluate smartphone platforms from two perspectives: ease of learning (for those unfamiliar with smartphone use) and ease of use (for experienced users). We then demonstrate an approach for using this task set by performing an exploratory study of both inexperienced smartphone users (using a convenience sample) and experienced users (using the keystroke model). Our exploration illustrates the methodology for using such a task set and, in so doing, reveals significant differences among the leading smartphone platforms between novice and expert users. As such, we provide some preliminary evidence that ease of use is indeed significantly different from ease of learning

Gesture Typing on Virtual Tabletop: Effect of Input Dimensions on Performance

The association of tabletop interaction with gesture typing presents interaction potential for situationally or physically impaired users. In this work, we use depth cameras to create touch surfaces on regular tabletops. We describe our prototype system and report on a supervised learning approach to fingertips touch classification. We follow with a gesture typing study that compares our system with a control tablet scenario and explore the influence of input size and aspect ratio of the virtual surface on the text input performance. We show that novice users perform with the same error rate at half the input rate with our system as compared to the control condition, that an input size between A5 and A4 present the best tradeoff between performance and user preference and that users' indirect tracking ability seems to be the overall performance limiting factor

COFFEE: Context Observer For Fast Enthralling Entertainment

Desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and the Kinect, oh my! With so many devices available to the average consumer, the limitations and pitfalls of each interface are becoming more apparent. Swimming in devices, users often have to stop and think about how to interact with each device to accomplish the current tasks at hand. The goal of this thesis is to minimize user cognitive effort in handling multiple devices by creating a context aware hybrid interface. The context aware system will be explored through the hybridization of gesture and touch interfaces using a multi-touch coffee table and the next-generation Microsoft Kinect. Coupling gesture and touch interfaces creates a novel multimodal interface that can leverage the benefits of both gestures and touch. The hybrid interface is able to utilize the more intuitive and dynamic use of gestures, while maintaining the precision of a tactile touch interface. Joining these two interfaces in an intuitive and context aware way will open up a new avenue for design and innovation

The trade-off between usability and security in the context of eGovernment

Electronic government (e-government) implements a wide range of online services that are supported by the latest information communication technology (ICT) and accessible by devices that have great mobility in delivering services to citizens. The ongoing rapid advancements of these portable devices make user centred service design more challenging and complex as citizens’ demands, needs and preferences are varied and become more complicated over time. Also, existing research reveals that e-government still experiencing the challenge of creating better users’ interaction in terms of accessing online information and using electronic services. Among a variety of reasons for this challenge, usability and security have been recognised in previous research to be the main reasons in users’ decisions to use e-government services and need to be investigated. In addition, to the limited attention given to users’ preferences and human-centred design guidelines, creates more unusable and unsecure services. This research attempts to investigate the trade-off between usability and security from a user perspective, in order to understand how users, perceive the usability and security of e-government services by focusing on three elements of e-government. The research investigates three aspects related to e-government services, when new service being introduced, new devices being integrated, and new technology adopted. Each research study examines one of these aspects to explore how users or citizens perceive them in term of usability and security. By conducting these three studies, the researcher seeks a clear and comprehensive picture of users’ attitudes, opinions and preferences, and a rich insight into users’ needs. This research tries to explain user requirements for new services, devices and technology implemented in e-government settings, in terms of usability and security features. A mixed methods strategy, using quantitative and qualitative methods, is used capture users’ experiences and attitudes to the use of e-government services in terms of usability and security. These methods help us understand the three, related, aspects of e-government through the eyes of the participants rather than in categories predetermined by the researcher. Therefore, a questionnaire survey is used, with open-ended questions, and focus group research. A broader landscape view on the present state of users’ perception and attitudes about the trade-off between usability and security was studied and reported according to the findings from the three studies. The three studies findings and the literature review help the researcher to propose a set of usability and security guidelines to improve e-government services, which in turn would improve e-services usability and security aspects. The proposed set of guidelines complement the general usability guidelines or heuristics by considering user concerns and insights. The author presented some recommendation based on the findings of each study. These guidelines can be useful to guide designers to develop a usable and more secure e-services that match with users’ requirements

What is good enough for mobile system evaluation: A Comparison of laboratory and field setting

There is no consensus on whether field tests are necessary in evaluating mobile systems. Empirical studies have compared evaluations in the laboratory environment and field environment, but they provide different results due to the lack of consistent testing environments. Contributing to mobile system evaluation exploration, this study conducts a comparative analysis between laboratory study and field study by recreating the natural context in the laboratory and using recording software embedded in the mobile device. The results show that involving natural use context in a controlled testing environment identifies more usability problems than a complex field test, when the objective is to uncover mobile system design details. If the goal of a usability evaluation is to involve users\u27 natural behaviors and examine context-dependent usability problems, a field test is necessary. We further analyze how to effectively simulate the natural context in the laboratory environment. The conclusion shows that the results might be different when using different user pools